The Time Machine 10

Study Guide Questions for Chapter Nine

If you are looking for the beginning of the study of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine then you can go HERE for a brief introduction. At the bottom of the introduction you will find the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. If you would like to see the growing list of available book studies available for free on this site you can go HERE. Enjoy!

Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)

Ignorance, Fear, Hope, Home

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What did the Time Traveller do in an attempt to keep the Morlocks from following him into the forest?

2. What did the Time Traveller have to stop Weena from doing in her ignorance?

3. What did the Morlocks attempt to do while the Time Traveller was carrying Weena through the forest?

4. What happened to impede the Time Traveller’s progress through the woods after the first encounter there with the Morlock’s?

5. What happened after the Time Traveller built his campfire which caused him to almost fall into the power of the Morlocks?

6. What caused the Morlocks to flee and leave the Time Traveller alone despite their superior numbers?

7. How did the Time Traveller survive the night?

8. What became of Weena?

9. What did the Time Traveller begin to think of and long for after surviving this horrible ordeal?

10. What did the Time Traveller find in his “trouser pocket?”

Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)

1. Why did Weena have no fear of the fire?

2. Why might the Morlocks have become so intent on capturing the Time Traveller when there was easier prey at hand?

3. The Time Traveller recounted that he “bit [himself] and screamed in a passionate desire to wake.” Why was this his reaction to the scene before him?

4. The name of God is mentioned only twice in this book. Once is here at the end of the chapter where the Time Traveller said “I would fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me wake” as he described the nightmarish scene and the other reference is in chapter five after losing the time machine when he said, “I must have raved to and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate.” What might be instructive about the fact that God’s name only appears in these two instances?

5. Why was the Time Traveller “relieved” that the Morlocks had left Weena’s “poor little body in the forest?”

6. The Time Traveller said that after this ordeal, “I began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing that is pain.” Why did he begin to have these thoughts now and what was painful about those thoughts?

7. What do you think was the Time Traveller’s greatest mistake in this chapter? Why?

Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)

1. The Eloi and Morlocks had evolved (devolved?) to the point that they no longer knew anything about fire, how to make it or use it. To what extent is it possible for a people to lose knowledge and technology? Can you give an example from history where this has happened? How might the loss of knowledge or technology occur amongst a people? How might such losses be prevented?

2. The Time Traveller longed for his home by the end of this chapter in a way he never had before. Define the term home. What are the various factors that go into making someplace a home? Why do you think people long for their home when they are away from it for long? How important is it to have a home? Can someone do just as well being constantly transient (nomadic) or does this always rob them of something that would be ideal to have?

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Read 2 Kings 22:8-20. Following upon the first Rhetoric question, what does this teach us about the possibility of losing information we should not and what is necessary to maintain the information that matters?

2. Read John 14:1-7. Following upon the second Rhetoric question, what impact does this passage have on the idea of what a “home” is and how should it impact us as Christians?